Chechen Mujahideen in Afghanistan

The Chechen Mujahideen in Afghanistan was a Chechen jihadist formation which was said to have operated in Afghanistan from 1994 into the 2010s. It was reported that thousands of Chechen refugees from the First Chechen War had formed the backbone of fundamentalist groups such as al-Qaeda, and that many of these fighters and their families came to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and trained and fought alongside al-Qaeda. In recent years, the presence of Chechens has been debated, as no Chechen was captured or definitively identified during the Afghanistan War.

History
The first reports of Chechen foreign fighters arriving in Afghanistan occurred in 1994. That year, the US State Department claimed that Shamil Basayev had brought hundreds of Chechen fighters with him to Peshawar, Pakistan and then to Khost Province in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, where they went on to form a part of al-Qaeda's elite 055 Brigade. In addition, other early Chechen arrivals were connected to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, having decided to take part in the Central Asian jihad. According to Ahmed Rashid, Chechens and African-American Muslims clustered around al-Qaeda circles in Kandahar, but neither group had any identified members during the Afghanistan War.

The Orient Advisory Group stated that, at the time of the First Chechen War (1994-1996), 15,000-25,000 young Chechen men fled the country and took refuge in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, and other ungoverned regions of Eurasia, becoming a backbone of al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations over the following two decades. This claim has been treated with skepticism, as it would assume that the young men, or at least a significant proportion of them, were not refugees, but terrorists (or soon-to-be terrorists) who desired to fight for jihad in other countries; however, in Austria alone, a 30,000-strong Chechen community developed, and few of them became foreign fighters until the time of the Syrian Civil War.

In addition to the refugees, many battle-hardened Chechen veterans of the Chechen Wars went to Afghanistan to train alongside al-Qaeda, and they trained other Chechen arrivals to fight the Russian Army at the time of the Second Chechen War (1999-2006). These Chechen fighters were known to be fearless, disciplined, and skilled, and they also tended to wear expensive North Face brand ski jackets and tactical vests. They played a major role in the Battle of Takur Ghar in 2002, during which they assisted the Taliban in attacking US forces in the Shahikot Valley during the Coalition forces' Operation Anaconda. However, US and Afghan forces began to associate any well-trained insurgent soldiers with the Chechens, claiming that any time the insurgents made any gains, it was due to the presence of Chechens among their ranks. The term "Chechen" came to be overused and misused, with many Northern Alliance fighters using the term "Chechen" to describe any Caucasian foreign fighters (including Central Asians, other North Caucasians, or Russian converts to Islam), and the US military blaming insurgent successes on the presence of disciplined Chechens.

The presence of Chechens in Afghanistan was also used as a political tool, especially by the Russian government, which was at war with the Chechen separatists back home. In 2002, the Russian government claimed that up to 300 Chechen families had been living in the Shahr-e Naw and Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhoods of Kabul. In 2011, the Russians claimed that fifteen Chechen women in the Dasht-e Archi neighborhood of Kunduz had married Talebs and were assisting them as experts on suicide bombings and roadside IEDs. The United States also played along with the myth to please Russia, often lumping "Chechens, Arabs, and Uzbeks" into a three-ethnicity compound term to refer to any foreign fighters. Northern Alliance forces, who were supplied by Russia, often reported the presence of Chechens in Afghanistan in order to please Russia, which would be able to justify its wars in Chechnya due to the Chechens' perceived terrorist connections. In October 2000, Ahmad Shah Massoud claimed that Uyghurs, Uzbeks, and Chechens had been flown in from Kabul and had been fighting his forces near Taloqan.

Despite the many reports and claims of Chechen foreign fighters being present in Afghanistan and Pakistan, no bodies have ever been found, and no prisoners have ever been identified as Chechen. Notably, none of the 500 prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay were Chechen, nor were any of the 3,000 fighters imprisoned at the Shibirgan dungeon.